Spoiler alert! What bogus stuff on The Expanse bugs you? Not limited to this show, any Sci-Fi

skyking · Thursday at 8:48 PM

I'll start:
S1E4 when the railgun round goes through their compartment and snips the doc's head off neatly, the shockwave of the round passing through there would have scrambled their shizzle and the bits of compartment on the way in would have sprayed high velocity stuff all over. Major suspension of disbelief there.

lxskllr · Thursday at 11:23 PM

I don't remember disliked details in The Expanse, other than the unlikable characters. I'm also willing to put up with a lot of bullshit as long as I like the core show. Trek has tons of nonsense throughout the franchise, but I'm willing to look the other way, cause they did such a good job on the rest; until... Discovery... Which brings to a couple things that are rage inducing, and were in the Expanse, now that I'm thinking about it. Personal transporters... How the fuck exactly is that supposed to work?! Nothing gets vocalized, only a single button is pushed, yet somehow no one ends up in a bulkhead or out in space. Ok, the computer can handle really stupid stuff like that, unless you WANT to be in space for some reason(How is that handled?!), but everyone dis/reappears in perfect alignment and positioning. They took neat futuristic tech and made it fantasy magic.

Here's where it intersects the Expanse... Fucking transparent displays. That's awful design, with awful usability, yet that has become FutureTech™. You could hardly have a worse interface. I'd be raging if I started working for a company, go to my work station, and find I can see through everything. Bad contrast, shit moving behind the display, trying to pick out text on a disruptive background. I'd rage quit before the day was over.

Bonus problem... Everything's a touchscreen. I can just barely understand and tolerate it on a phone due to the limited constraints, but it has very few places on a ship. Whoever thinks touchscreen should be used for flying(or driving a bog standard car) should be kicked in the balls til they see the error of their ways.

gorobei · Friday at 4:15 AM

skyking said:
I'll start:
S1E4 when the railgun round goes through their compartment and snips the doc's head off neatly, the shockwave of the round passing through there would have scrambled their shizzle and the bits of compartment on the way in would have sprayed high velocity stuff all over. Major suspension of disbelief there.

they seem to be imitating APFSDS results from the gulf war. abrams friendly fired on bradleys and the rounds mostly went thru and thru without spalling or superheating the air in the compartment. without the heavy armor of main battle tanks, APFSDS wont fragment or deform. that's why they use HEAT for light armored vehicle. the lack of depressurization effects is more glaring. even if they were low psi O2 rich like the apollo missions, the round would have likely hit something and sparked causing a fire.

for me recently it was Gundam Quuux: alternate history UC where civilians use mecha for underground duels/gambling. the series was going along fine and then one team used electricity to attack the pilot directly without having to deal with getting through the armor. had to pause it and walk away for 20 minutes at that bit of plot stupidity.
no space vehicle, no armored fighting vehicle, no engineer would ever make something so vulnerable to surface electricity, the damn thing is a faraday cage. the space suit would never allow current flow to reach the pilot. the amount of ionizing radiation in space is square one when it comes to designing protection.
it was lazy writing that most of the mecha anime have turned into a trope when they want an underhanded or need a magical vulnerability for the protagonist. within 1 minute of thinking about it i had a better solution: use sonic/vibration limpet mine that sweeps through and finds a resonance frequency that damages the mecha parts or affects the pilot. barber clippers and jackhammers can cause a nerve damage condition in their user's hands making them go numb when used for too long. the hand gets a pins and needle numbness and fingers lose responsiveness.(soak hand in hot[running?] water to cure)
some of it is wanting a visual shorthand, but that really doesnt excuse not knowing basic science.

brianmanahan · Friday at 8:02 AM

lxskllr said:
Bonus problem... Everything's a touchscreen. I can just barely understand and tolerate it on a phone due to the limited constraints, but it has very few places on a ship. Whoever thinks touchscreen should be used for flying(or driving a bog standard car) should be kicked in the balls til they see the error of their ways.

i dunno, i know kids who grew up with tablets and they automatically assume everything should be a touchscreen now. "why can't i touch this, is it broke?"

K1052 · Friday at 8:13 AM

lxskllr said:
I don't remember disliked details in The Expanse, other than the unlikable characters. I'm also willing to put up with a lot of bullshit as long as I like the core show. Trek has tons of nonsense throughout the franchise, but I'm willing to look the other way, cause they did such a good job on the rest; until... Discovery... Which brings to a couple things that are rage inducing, and were in the Expanse, now that I'm thinking about it. Personal transporters... How the fuck exactly is that supposed to work?! Nothing gets vocalized, only a single button is pushed, yet somehow no one ends up in a bulkhead or out in space.

I never missed watching people walk into or out of a room so much when they started relying heavily on this technology. People just popping in and out of scenes. Man it sucks. Full disclosure though I hated Discovery but at least it gave us SNW which is way way better.

kage69 · Friday at 9:30 AM

skyking said:
I'll start:
S1E4 when the railgun round goes through their compartment and snips the doc's head off neatly, the shockwave of the round passing through there would have scrambled their shizzle and the bits of compartment on the way in would have sprayed high velocity stuff all over. Major suspension of disbelief there.

Yup. That much kinetic energy enters the chat and it's a far, faaaaaar different result than that cookie cutter effect. Shockwave, material ignition, spall, oh god the spall...

Would make for a quick series. Doc takes one to the face aaaaand Fin.

thestrangebrew1 · Friday at 10:53 AM

brianmanahan said:
i dunno, i know kids who grew up with tablets and they automatically assume everything should be a touchscreen now. "why can't i touch this, is it broke?"

Yea I built my daughter a desktop and gave her my 27" monitor to use with it last year. I booted it up while she was sitting in front of it and when the login screen popped up she kept trying to tap it to enter her credentials. I asked her what she was doing and she asked "it's not touch screen?" looking quite confused. She's 15. yeah....

GodisanAtheist · Friday at 12:43 PM

brianmanahan said:
i dunno, i know kids who grew up with tablets and they automatically assume everything should be a touchscreen now. "why can't i touch this, is it broke?"

-Funny story took my daughter to the movies a few years ago and she was getting mad the movie posters were broken and wouldn't scroll to the next one as she swiped :-D

Anyhow I always figure the clear glass/hologram future computers are more about visual presentation and making a scene that's essentially about starting at a black rectangle more visually interesting.

Its like the forearm bracers they put on everyone in ancient Greece/rome. It just makes the scene more interesting.

[DHT]Osiris · Friday at 2:39 PM

The Martian: martian air doesn't have enough density to blow the rocket about, even if it was tornado speeds.

Chapbass · Friday at 3:00 PM

Battlestar Galactica reboot: The cylons never had a plan.

[DHT]Osiris · Friday at 3:57 PM

Chapbass said:
Battlestar Galactica reboot: The cylons never had a plan.

That at least made sense. They were created with insufficient drive and sense of imagination, so after rebelling they only worked on vengeance. That got them past the goalposts of destroying humanity's only real bastion of the 12 colonies but they had little to work with after that beyond 'chase the last battlestars down and kill them'. For them it was as hollow as the existence of AM in 'i have no mouth'.

Kaido · Friday at 5:11 PM

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thatsabooklight/

GodisanAtheist · Friday at 6:55 PM

The Matrix using humans as batteries thing was so unnecessarily dumb, literally the same story could have been told if humans were somewhat more believability used as a vast neural network or something.

I think that was the original plan too but it was considered too difficult for audiences to grasp and so scrapped for the battery explanation.

DAPUNISHER · Friday at 7:05 PM

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
and other science facts (la la la),
Then repeat to yourself, "It's just a show,
I should really just relax

Indus · Friday at 7:14 PM

In the Expanse the only 2 things that bug me are.. ships flying backwards?? Or maybe they're decelerating?

2nd thing is when they hook up some sort of IV for fast travel.. what is that??

Chapbass said:
Battlestar Galactica reboot: The cylons never had a plan.

Yeah Cavil was just about as Trumpy as you can get.. Hopefully Trump follows suit and ends like Cavil did.

BoomerD · Friday at 7:17 PM

Indus said:
In the Expanse the only 2 things that bug me are.. ships flying backwards?? Or maybe they're decelerating?

2nd thing is when they hook up some sort of IV for fast travel.. what is that??

Yeah Cavil was just about as Trumpy as you can get.. Hopefully Trump follows suit and ends like Cavil did.

Yes, flying backwards is decelerating. The IV stuff is supposed to help with high g travel.

Acceleration drugs

Acceleration Drugs, Gravity Fluids, or simply known to most pilots as “The Juice” is a mixture of various blood thinners, blood vessel reinforcers, adrenalines and various other stimuli. Its purpose is to protect the organs and cardiovascular system of occupants while executing high G maneuvers...

expanse.fandom.com

Kaido · Friday at 9:10 PM

GodisanAtheist said:
The Matrix using humans as batteries thing was so unnecessarily dumb, literally the same story could have been told if humans were somewhat more believability used as a vast neural network or something.

I think that was the original plan too but it was considered too difficult for audiences to grasp and so scrapped for the battery explanation.

There was a segment of kids at my high school who wandered around in a state of shock for weeks after watching the Matrix, as it caused them to question reality

Would have loved to have seen their reactions after the Truman Show lol

Indus · Friday at 10:30 PM

Chapbass said:
Battlestar Galactica reboot: The cylons never had a plan.

Take 2:

They had a plan but they didn't realize.. every one has a plan till they get punched in the face.

Thereafter they never planned anything.. they just winged it!

skyking · Saturday at 12:12 AM

kage69 said:
Yup. That much kinetic energy enters the chat and it's a far, faaaaaar different result than that cookie cutter effect. Shockwave, material ignition, spall, oh god the spall...

Would make for a quick series. Doc takes one to the face aaaaand Fin.

@gorobei mentioned the bradley FF incidents, but the railgun rounds are typically 50% higher velocity than the fastest tank round, and the railgun in space is not losing any speed. If it heads out the muzzle at 3KM/S, that is what it will arrive at no matter the distance, and of course the Delta V's.
The holes were about 200MM. That is going to pop your ears eh?

lxskllr · Saturday at 10:01 PM

I thought I had something, but I was wrong. Picked back up watching Voyager, and I was fixating on why the nacelles move. It didn't bother me, but it seemed like a needless complexity that was only there for visual appeal. This is the reason given after doing a search...

The Voyager entry on StarTrek.com speaks to the reason for the movable ("variable geometery") warp nacelles. After the events of TNG "Force of Nature" it was proven that high speed warp damages the structure of subspace.
The new 'folding wing' seems to negate this by moving when initiating high warp (or creating a substantial warp field). Notably, when low warp is initiated this same movement doesn't always seem to take place

Voyager's folding wing-and-nacelle warp drive system allows the starship to exceed the warp 5 "speed limit" without polluting the space continuum. Voyager can reach a speed of warp 9.975, but only for short periods.
The TNG Technical Manual also suggests that variable geometry nacelles would provide for greater stability and less shearing stress at high warp speeds

Out of universe, you can see from this early design sketch that the warp nacelles were intended to have much more dramatic movable portions (referred to as "Warp Field Enhancers") that would flare out from the main ship. This was ultimately scaled back due to studio concerns over lighting and budgets.

--Valorum

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/56937/ddg#56939

H T C · Saturday at 10:45 PM

BoomerD said:
Yes, flying backwards is decelerating. The IV stuff is supposed to help with high g travel.

Acceleration drugs

Acceleration Drugs, Gravity Fluids, or simply known to most pilots as “The Juice” is a mixture of various blood thinners, blood vessel reinforcers, adrenalines and various other stimuli. Its purpose is to protect the organs and cardiovascular system of occupants while executing high G maneuvers...

expanse.fandom.com

It's a lot weirder HOW they give the people that IV, than what that IV really is.

When they are in those crash couches (literal name for the seats), they are NEVER close to any syringes, so HOW EXACTLY do those IV fluids enter their bodies?

BoomerD · 2025-05-11T01:45:35-0400

H T C said:
It's a lot weirder HOW they give the people that IV, than what that IV really is.

When they are in those crash couches (literal name for the seats), they are NEVER close to any syringes, so HOW EXACTLY do those IV fluids enter their bodies?

Built in systems in both seating and suits? Still...you'd think there would be punctures all over their bodies from it.

H T C · 2025-05-11T02:06:17-0400

BoomerD said:
Built in systems in both seating and suits? Still...you'd think there would be punctures all over their bodies from it.

Makes sense ...

Problem is, when they're seated, it doesn't look like they're sitting with "alignment" to whatever they might have on the suits: their movements when seated SHOULD BE a lot more restricted precisely BECAUSE of that "alignment", but it LOOKS like they're seated in "gaming chairs" instead.

Unless ... they only need to sit in the couches properly ONCE, and then whatever is connected to the suits isn't fixed (flexible tubes or some such??), but the the problem would be how to leave the seats AND have those tubes disconnect themselves, since it's on their backs ...

BoomerD · 2025-05-11T02:39:53-0400

H T C said:
Makes sense ...

Problem is, when they're seated, it doesn't look like they're sitting with "alignment" to whatever they might have on the suits: their movements when seated SHOULD BE a lot more restricted precisely BECAUSE of that "alignment", but it LOOKS like they're seated in "gaming chairs" instead.

Unless ... they only need to sit in the couches properly ONCE, and then whatever is connected to the suits isn't fixed (flexible tubes or some such??), but the the problem would be how to leave the seats AND have those tubes disconnect themselves, since it's on their backs ...

Yeah...and they're in and out of their seats/crash couches whenever they need...with no obvious attachments to the system

gorobei · 2025-05-11T04:39:58-0400

you can pneumatic inject through skin without needle penetration, but probably not in the amounts the expanse show presents. realistically any expanse spaceship occupant would need a 2 hour suit up sequence for all the electrodes/catheters/diapers/dermal-patches needed to monitor and treat the body in realtime changing conditions.

while we are bagging on the expanse. when the ships got stopped by the gate the premise that zero-g was deadly for simple cases of bleeding was a bit off. blood pooling on a skin wound preventing drying and proper coagulation because it doesnt drain away from lack of gravity doesnt really fly in the face of current medical tools. suction pumps and capillary action from gauze will pull pooled blood away from the wound. hell, a styptic pen or powder will generally stop bleeds in a few seconds.

Spoiler alert! What bogus stuff on The Expanse bugs you? Not limited to this show, any Sci-Fi

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